A Food Journal of a Sort

Reading Julia Child’s My Years in France early in the year prodded me to begin a food journal just to keep track if I’m staying on the safe side and not over-indulging when the season for that has passed.

I once wondered aloud what is it about my kids’ generation. It is almost SOP for them to take pictures of the food set before them before they dig in. Good friend Gou de Jesus surmised people like us prefer to chew on the thought, that is, savor food first, then reconstruct the flavor, texture, presentation, etc., with words. We liked to have our memory do the work, not the digicam.

Which is why I don’t have food pics for this remembrance of a recent repast I had on the first Sunday of this year, the Feast of the Three Kings.

My other gourmand friend Cynthia Alberto Diaz and I have kept a January tradition of visiting the Sieverts (painters Federico and Grace, their son, our godson Gabriel). At their former residence in Baesa, Quezon City, we used to pile on mismatched dishes and drink and be jolly till way past Gabriel’s bedtime. Now that they live with Grace’s mother somewhere near Project 6, we felt we had to be more subdued.

My box of empanada matched Cyn’s pansit Malabon and pichi-pichi. Grace prepared something I had craved for all year round, ginataang halo-halo. We set the modest feast in their backyard, by the tool shed and not far from the coop of Gabriel’s hen.

Federico brought out a bottle of red wine and set it before Cyn. And we “talked stories” all afternoon long while I made repeated trips to the makeshift buffet table, refilling my bowl of ginataan until I had to unbutton my pants so I could breathe and sigh the sigh of the satiated.

The secret, Cyn and Federico agreed, was not only to have all the cubed ingredients present in the pot (ube, langka, saba, kamote, bilo-bilo, sago and coconut milk) but to let the whole mix boil slowly until it is of a thick, sticky consistency. Malapot is the word for it.

Cyn, the true-blue Navotas girl, had a forkful of pansit and quickly noted it lacked salt. A bottle of patis was brought out to remedy the situation.

Then Federico brought out his presents for us. Lo and behold, colorful paper mobiles with twirling tails and doily-like cutouts. So colorful and reminiscent of the southern sarimanok. They were each attached to a string so we could hang them. Somewhere below was a separate rectangular paper with a cut-out of the name Jesus; behind it was an abstract cut-out of a fish. I’ve always addressed Grace “Grace of Jesus” when we were colleagues at a media office. (De Jesus is her maiden name.)

Federico also handed us a bookmark—just a length of white paper with two diagonal red ribbons pasted on one side. He said, “If you have faith, you will find him.” I raised my bookmark against the light, and there it was: the name Jesus.

Photo shows one of Federico's birds in the making (from his Facebook profile)